My Favorite Pins

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By pins I mean brooches, although I’ve always referred to them simply as pins. 

I was thinkin’ about coupons (the kind you find in a Sunday paper that are used to get a discount on grocery items) and how they’re not as big as they used to be.  Long ago I used to clip coupons, but I just don’t bother any more, and I don’t think anyone else does, either.  It takes a dollar’s worth of effort to save 25 cents with coupons.

Anyway, coupons got me thinkin’ about Green Stamps.  Remember Green Stamps?  If you do, you must be at least as old as I am.  Probably older.  I was about 8 years old when my mom bought me a pin with Green Stamps.

As I recall, she allotted me a portion of her Green Stamp cache, allowing me to select an item of my liking to spend them on.  With my windfall of funny money I bought a pretty little pin.  I still have it, as a matter of fact.  It is an image of a butterfly, fashioned out of gold colored metal and encrusted with pastel rhinestones.  In spite of its humble beginnings it is a quality piece, and I treasured it as such. 

There are other pins, and other stories... though I don’t think they’ve ever been told.  Is a story a story unless it’s been told?

  

.....I have a gold colored pin in the shape of a cursive ‘C.’ 

When I was about 9 years old my mom made a trip to Florida for a couple of weeks to help her parents out when my grandma was having gall bladder surgery.  She took my youngest sister (who was a toddler at the time) with her, leaving my dad to look after their 5 other children, of whom I was second oldest.  I don’t remember a lot about the 2 weeks my mom was gone, but what I do remember is washing... dishes and clothes, lots of them, and starting chores the minute we got home from school.  It seemed like forever, but mom finally returned, and I was never so happy to see her.  I had not expected a present, but was surprised and proud when she presented me with the ‘C’ pin.  I still have it.

And then there’s the Christmas pin...

I was 10 or 11 years old.  Each child in my class at school was to bring a wrapped gift.  At the class Christmas party the gifts were put into 2 bags, one for boys and one for girls. Two students were chosen to distribute the gifts, handing them out more or less randomly.  The student in charge of the “girls’ bag” happened to have a dis-like for me, and purposefully left me till last, in time begrudgingly handing me the final gift, a remarkably small parcel which had fallen to the bottom of the bag.  It turned out to be a very pretty little pin- gold colored metal in the shape of a wreath, decorated with shiny green and red metallic paint, the red bow graced with a single scarlet rhinestone.  It happened to have been the gift donated by my best friend.  I still have it, and, in fact, take pleasure in wearing it during the holiday season.